Christmas comes but once a November

Gentle reader, I know what you probably think about us newspaper columnists. You think we're a bunch of hard-boiled, hard-bitten cynics who care for naught but conflict and controversy, right?

But while I am indeed hard-bitten — the mosquitoes were especially bad this year — I still feel the need to "step back" once in a while and philosophically contemplate the eternal rhythms of life, like the change of the seasons. And lo, here we are in late September, heralding as always the start of a new season!

Namely, the season of people grousing and moaning that the Christmas season is starting too darned early.

As reported last week in the Daily Press by Nicole Paitsel, some retailers are already displaying Christmas trees and advertising Christmas gifts, and as always there are people who are bugged by it. I used to be one of those people. You would hear me ranting:

"What? Christmas ads before Thanksgiving? Before Halloween, even? As every right-thinking American knows, the Christmas season does not officially begin until Santa Claus appears at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade! And even that is too early! Why, in the old days, we didn't even put up the tree until Christmas Eve! Because Christmas Day is when the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas begins! 'No lords a-leaping before Christmas,' was always our rule! And we kept the decorations up all that time, except for the year when Uncle Jake had too much eggnog on New Year's Eve and toppled into the tree and had to go to the emergency room with a bubble light lodged in his nostril! And it was April before we remembered to take the Christmas lights off the house! And another thing …"

But then I recalled the wise adage, "It is better to light one candle than to curse the fact that you forgot to buy flashlight batteries, even after your wife reminded you three or four times." Instead of pointless ranting, this time I have turned the issue over to the deep thinkers at the Get Serious! Society for Seasonal Sufficiency Satisfaction (motto: "Our thinking is so deep, our thinking caps are coal miners' helmets"), who propose a radical solution.

You know how we have Daylight Saving Time? To combat excessive holiday seasons, what we are proposing is Season Saving Time. It would work like this:

If Christmas ads and store displays begin appearing before Halloween, Season Saving Time will automatically go into effect. At the end of November, the calendar will "spring forward," jumping immediately to January 1st. The month of December will be skipped over entirely.

As a result, Christmas will have to be celebrated in November. It could be November 25th, to keep the traditional date of the month.

After all, if the push is to get people to do their Christmas shopping earlier, we might as well celebrate the holiday a month earlier, so the season is not dragged out too long

Christmas in November would, obviously, create a scheduling conflict with Thanksgiving. So the date of Thanksgiving also would have to be moved up, to the fourth Thursday in October. (Provided, of course, that the NFL can reschedule those Thanksgiving football games. Some traditions are too sacred to be messed with).

By now you have no doubt foreseen the domino effect this has on Halloween, which now must become the last night in September.

Having sprung forward, the calendar will also have to fall back, putting a month back into the year somewhere to replace the missing December. And here's the beauty part:

We will repeat May. Yes, have May twice. At the end of May 31st, we will go back to May 1st and do the whole month over again.

Sure, May is such a lovely month, wouldn't you like to have more of it? I know I never want it to end.

Since there will be two Mays, there will be two Mother's Days, which retailers should benefit from. Who would dare argue that we shouldn't do more for our mothers?

I know, some people would say that if you're going to remove a month from the year, it should be cold, dreary February. But we can't do without Valentine's Day, the ladies would never forgive us. Perhaps it could be bumped to March, as long as Saint Patrick doesn't mind sharing the action with Saint Valentine.

Meanwhile, I will get cracking on my Christmas shopping, though I don't need any ads or displays to remind me to do it. For stocking stuffers, I think I had better get flashlight batteries.